Head of Belgian Group Said to Recruit Fighters for Syria Gets 12-Year Term

BRUSSELS — In a case seen as a test of Europe’s ability to combat Islamic extremism through the courts, a Belgian judge on Wednesday ruled that Sharia4Belgium, a group accused of recruiting fighters for Syria, was a terrorist organization and sentenced the group’s leader to 12 years in prison.

The trial began in September in the port city of Antwerp and has drawn attention across Europe amid a debate about how to fight radicalization, particularly after gunmen killed 17 people last month in Paris and its surroundings.

The principal defendant in the Belgian case, Fouad Belkacem, 32, a petty criminal turned religious zealot who led Sharia4Belgium, has not been directly linked to any terrorist attacks. Defense lawyers argued that the organization merely aimed to provoke public opinion, comparing it to the dissident Russian punk protest group Pussy Riot and the radical Ukrainian feminist organization Femen.

But the Correctional Tribunal in Antwerp dismissed those arguments in its verdict on Wednesday. It described Sharia4Belgium as a terrorist organization that helped recruit dozens of young Belgian Muslims as fighters for extremist groups in Syria that embrace an ultraconservative strand of Islam known as Salafism.

Mr. Belkacem, unlike many other defendants in the trial, never traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State or other militant groups. Yet Judge Luc Potargent described the defendant as the driving force behind Sharia4Belgium and said he was therefore responsible for turning others into jihadist militants.

“Belkacem is responsible for the radicalization of young men to prepare them for Salafist combat, which has at its core no place for democratic values,” Judge Potargent said in his decision, according to Agence France-Presse. “Sharia4Belgium recruited these young men for armed combat and organized their departure for Syria.”

In addition to Mr. Belkacem, 45 other defendants were accused of belonging to Sharia4Belgium, but only eight of them were present in the courtroom. The others are either still fighting in Syria or are reported to have died.

Seven members of the group were sentenced to three to five years in prison. The court acquitted a mother who had been accused of providing money for her son to travel to Syria, the Belgian news media reported.

A verdict was originally expected last month, but the proceedings were postponed after the attacks in Paris on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and at a kosher supermarket.

Sharia4Belgium, according to Pieter Van Ostaeyen, a Belgian researcher who has observed jihadists who travel to Syria, played an important role in turning Belgium into Europe’s biggest source of jihadist fighters, as a proportion of the total population. Belgian authorities reported that around 350 citizens had gone to Syria by late last year, and that more than 70 had returned home. Mr. Ostaeyen estimated the first number at closer to 450.

Among the Belgians who fought in Syria is Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who is suspected of leading a thwarted plot to attack police officers across Belgium last month, in what authorities described as a major terrorist operation. The police carried out a series of raids last month on homes in the Molenbeek district of Brussels and in the eastern town of Verviers, where two people suspected of being militants were killed.

Mr. Belkacem has a long arrest record for crimes including theft and assault, and he drifted into Islamic militancy under the influence of a radical Muslim cleric in London, Anjem Choudary, Belgian officials said. The group started recruiting fighters for Syria around 2011.

The organization quickly drew the attention of antiterrorism investigators, who opened an inquiry into its activities in early 2012. In connection with the investigation, the police raided 48 properties in Antwerp and other Belgian towns in 2013.

In its ruling on Wednesday, the court declined to drop proceedings against 37 defendants who were tried in absentia, several of whom are believed to have died in fighting in Syria. The judge, according to the Belgian news media, noted that militants sometimes faked their deaths to avoid prosecution. Mr. Abaaoud, for instance, was reported to have been killed last fall but then resurfaced in Europe.

The court ordered the immediate arrest of the 37 defendants who were not present, sentencing them to prison terms of up to 15 years.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Belgian Court Jails Members of Group Linked to Terrorism. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe